[mythtv-users] Need advice for storage project

[Gert van der Knokke]

Nathan Richardson wrote:

>I've got two projects for the week - building my Myth TV box (Pundit
>Frontend/Backend) and building a 320gb 1394a firewire drive enclosure
>out of an old SCSI multibay case.
>
>I'd like to get the storage box set up before the mythTV box, so that
>I can do some file transfer and free up the 80gb disk that I am going
>to use in the Pundit. Basically, I need to decide how to set up the
>storage before really playing around much in Myth. I plan to use the
>storage for video and audio, but (if possible) use the drive actually
>in the Myth box for recording live TV. Basically, I'll move files over
>once they're reencoded to MPEG4.
>
>  
>
Hmm. another option is to take an older PC (like a Pentium 2 system, 
Celeron is fine too) and use a small (this drive has to be recognized by 
the Bios) drive say 1 to 2 Gb on the primary port, to make a small Linux 
system on (I've done a Mandrake 10 server install in less than 400 Mb).
Then  hookup the  two 160 Gb drives to the secondary IDE port (set these 
to 'none' in the Bios otherwise the board might not boot up) and create 
a software RAID0 system on them. Put in a network card and voila: one 
nice NAS box.

If you take a little bit faster CPU (like pentium 3 or Celeron > 700 
MHz) you can turn this into a nice Myth backend if you use Hauppauge 
PVR250(s) for capturing.

Gert

P.S. puritains will probably say that creating raid0 on a single  cable 
is  bad but speed isn't going to be an issue. But if you want speed, you 
can connect each 160 Gb drive to it's own IDE port..
Linux software raid is very flexible in this.